June 9, 2010

Bleeding

You see, I was doing the calculations in my head. My newest cycle only allowed me 7, maybe 8 non-bleeding days a month.

On day 9, I knew I was pregnant, but it was too early to test.

On day 10, I knew I was pregnant, but it was too early to test.

But I knew.

I went to the doctor, and everything was confirmed. I was barely pregnant, not even enough that a regular person would notice, but I've never been regular.

I had weekly appointments and ultrasounds. I never got to keep the pictures though. If they don't think your baby is going to survive, they don't give you a picture to take home.

At 6 weeks, they told me I would surely miscarry.

At 8 weeks, they told me even if the baby did survive, it would have a lot of problems.

At 12 weeks, I was put on bed rest.

At 16 weeks, I was admitted to the hospital for preterm labor. I got a lot of shots, an ultrasound, and a prescription for terbutaline. We negotiated with the doctor, and made arrangements with the family and neighbors. I was allowed to go home and lay on the couch.

At 18 weeks, I started bleeding. I went back to the hospital. I got shots, they stopped the labor, and told me that I was only allowed to get up to use the bathroom.

At 20 weeks, they told me congratulations, because they never thought I'd make it this far.

Between weeks 20 and 30, I was admitted to the hospital 5 more times. It was harder to stop labor each time.

Week 30 hit, and I was back at the hospital. I started in the ER. The ER does not like pregnant women, so they sent me up to Labor and Delivery because surely, I was just in labor.

I wasn't.

So I got sent back to the ER where they ran tests, and tried to get ultrasounds of my kidneys, gallbladder, and appendix. They couldn't find my gallbladder, and my appendix looked fine, so they gave me a morphine drip while we waited for my blood work to come back.

As I was lying in the hospital bed, where I had been for the last 6 hours, I went into labor. A nurse started timing my contractions. Every two minutes, lasting just about as long.

My favorite part of that day was overhearing conversations between the medical staff.

No, she was just laying there! She's on morphine! She hasn't even sat up! She just went into labor!

They didn't have a good reason for the contractions either.

They took me back upstairs and gave me more shots. This time they gave me magnesium. They contractions finally slowed, and I was given the option to lay in bed there, or lay in bed at home.... I went home.

At Week 32, my water broke.

Every last drop of amniotic fluid that was cushioning Taylor gushed out onto my bed. DadGuy grabbed some towels, while I called my family to come and stay with the kids.

Back to the hospital I went.

I was given an epidural, again in the hopes that it would slow things down, but Taylor was not having it.

She was in distress, and since there was no fluid to cushion her, the problems were getting worse. She needed to Get! Out! Now! so the doctors filled up my uterus with saline, amnioinfusion, so that I could push her out.

Taylor entered into this world at 10:41 am.

There was not a sound in the room.

Taylor's head and neck were black with bruised from the intensity of the contractions and the lack of cushioning.

She was struggling to breathe as the pediatric team took her away.

I was hemorrhaging, and in renal failure.

Bodies aren't meant to carry babies back to back to back to back, and mine was pissed.

Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, I was soon back to my version of normal, and discharged a week later.

When we finally got Taylor home, it was time to focus on ME. First things first, DadGuy got a vasectomy.

I reverted to the "bleeding for three weeks, off for one" cycle.

As the pain and cramping got more and more severe, it was time to look into our surgical options.

I had a D&C, hysteroscopy, and diagnostic laparoscopy. Except for a few growths on my ovaries, and a uterine infection, everything appeared normal, then the pathology came back. As it turns out, I hadn't delivered all of the placenta, and my body was trying to get it out. Of course, the placental remains were from a boy, which means that I hadn't really been in pre-term labor at all, because I was still in "active" labor from child number three, which means that I had been in labor for a year.

My body was beyond broken.

It was only a month before I was bleeding again.

The sharp, stabbing pains in my gut still hadn't subsided, so I was sent for a colonoscopy. Pre-cancerous growths in my colon and lower intestines were found, removed, and determined to be part of the cause of the stabbing feeling.